Safety, immunogenicity and preliminary efficacy of multiple-site vaccination with an Epidermal Growth Factor (EGF) based cancer vaccine in advanced non small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients

The prognosis of patients with advanced non small cell lung (NSCLC) cancer remains dismal. Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor is over-expressed in many epithelial derived tumors and its role in the development and progression of NSCLC is widely documented. CimaVax-EGF is a therapeutic cancer vaccine composed by human recombinant Epidermal Growth Factor (EGF) conjugated to a carrier protein, P64K from Neisseria Meningitides. The vaccine is intended to induce antibodies against self EGF that would block EGF-EGFR interaction. CimaVax-EGF has been evaluated so far in more than 1000 advanced NSCLC patients, as second line therapy. Two separate studies were compared to assess the impact of high dose vaccination at multiple anatomic sites in terms of immunogenicity, safety and preliminary efficacy in stage IIIb/IV NSCLC patients. In both clinical trials, patients started vaccination 1 month after finishing first line chemotherapy. Vaccination at 4 sites with 2.4 mg of EGF (high dose) was very safe. The most frequent adverse events were grade 1 or 2 injection site reactions, fever, headache and vomiting. Patients had a trend toward higher antibody response. The percent of very good responders significantly augmented and there was a faster decrease of circulating EGF. All vaccinated patients and those classified as good responders immunized with high dose at 4 sites, had a large tendency to improved survival

Palladium-Catalyzed PIDA-Mediated δ-C(sp3 ) H Acetoxylation of amino acid derivatives: overriding competitive intramolecular amination

The selective δ-C(sp3)−H acetoxylation of N-(SO2Py)-protected amino acid derivatives has been accomplished by using palladium-catalysis and PhI(OAc)2 (PIDA) as both terminal oxidant and acetoxy source. The distinct structural and electronic features of the SO2Py compared to more traditional carbonyl-based directing groups is essential to override the otherwise more favourable competitive intramolecular C−H amination. The δ-site selectivity predominates over traditionally more favorable 5-membered cyclopalladation at competitive γ-CH2. Experimental and DFT mechanistic studies provide important insights about the mechanism and the underlying factors controlling the chemo- and regioselectivityWe thank the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN) and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER, UE) for financial support (Agencia Estatal de Investigación/Project PGC2018-098660-B-I00). M.M.-M. thanks MINECO for a FPI predoctoral fellowship and D.S.P. thanks Fonds der chemischen Industrie FCI (PhD fellowship) for financial suppor

The Mediterranean Island Wetlands (MedIsWet) inventory: strengths and shortfalls of the currently available floristic data

MedIsWet (Conservation of the island wetlands of the Mediterranean Basin) is a MAVA funded project which aims at investigating all seasonal or permanent island wetlands both natural and artificial, with a minimum extent of 0.1 hectares. More than 16,000 wetlands from almost all the Mediterranean, including islands from France, Italy, Malta, Croatia, Cyprus, Tunisia, Turkey, Greece and Spain were mapped. Over 2,500 of them were inventoried in the field and more than 500 scientific contributions catalogued. In total, more than 35,000 plant occurrences were uploaded, in a standardised and comparable way, on the national open-source web portals. These can be related to the recorded threats, uses and other spatially retrievable information. Here, we show strengths and shortfalls of the already available information about the floristic records. Although further improvements are needed, we discuss how these data can be used for research and policy actions and to develop conservation projects